Gravity

In “Gravity,” released in 2013, George Clooney plays an expert astronaut who looks hilariously like Buzz Lightyear, and Sandra Bullock is a medical engineer who is taking her first mission into space and is having a hard time keeping a stable stomach.

Owen Gleiberman said in his review, “They float around in the inky silent darkness, bobbing and gliding, with Earth spread out beneath them like a giant luminescent screensaver. Even when tethered to a spacecraft, the two are really out there, exhilaratingly and terrifyingly free.” The miracle of the movie is the way that director Alfonso Cuarón, using special effects and 3D with a nearly graceful ease and command, places the audience exactly in space along with the two characters. “Gravity” is an amazing technological look of a movie, one that might be put in the science fiction genre, except that it’s not a futuristic fantasy. It’s a story of disaster and grief and survival focusing on the possibilities of space travel as they exist today. Part of what makes the film so engaging is that it gives its characters no easy escapes.

Gleiberman noted, “The famous 10-minute tracking shot in Cuarón’s “Children of Men” was a bravura act of staging, yet watching it, you could tell that it was thought-out and choreographed. In Gravity, though, the director works in such an ingeniously flowing and sustained way that his images all but transcend the essential visual grammar of “the shot.” The camera glides through space, twirling and doubling back, following the characters through pod doors and into the cramped interiors of satellites and then out again, giving the entire movie the spontaneous feel of a single unbroken shot — a free-floating galactic reverie.”

At the beginning we hear radio rambles of talk between the astronauts and Houston, and then, almost gradually, a spacecraft flies into view from the right side of the screen – it’s a U.S. shuttle, and the astronauts are walking outside of it, trying to repair a problem on the ship. Gleiberman noted, “You’ll surely be reminded of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” because what Cuarón echoes from Kubrick’s great film — and what still seems eerily surreal in an outer-space movie — is the creeping rhythm of space, the weightlessness that places everything in a trance, turning the action into moment-to-moment semi-slow motion, a feeling of life suspended. Simply as an out-of-this-world, zero-friction “ride,” “Gravity” is unforgettable, yet the real essence of Cuarón’s achievement is that the film’s technical virtuosity and its emotional grip become one.”

Clooney’s Matt Kowalski and Bullock’s Ryan Stone are on a routine mission, but then there’s a bulletin from Houston. A Russian satellite has exploded, causing a chain reaction. A shower of debris is about to come flying right at them, so they must abort the mission. It’s too late, however: The debris hits them, full force (Gleiberman said, “the 3-D places us right in the hurtling metal thick of it”), ripping the ship apart. Seconds later, there is no ship. They are lost in space.

Gleiberman said, “The ebb and flow of “Gravity’s” story is deeply organic — it seems to be making itself up as it goes along, and that’s how it hooks us. Yet what sustains our absorption is a rather tricky synthesis between our involvement in the characters’ plight and our head-scratching wonder at the matter-of-fact way that the film brings the physical realities of space to life: the sheer cosmic terror of it, the images of satellites cluttered with drifting matter, from chess rooks to tears.” The actors are impressive. Clooney shows a haunting loyalty beneath his rage, and Bullock is as desperate and resourceful and anxious and brave as Sigourney Weaver in the last half of “Alien.” When Stone twists, slowly, out of her space suit, we realize that we’re seeing a story of rebirth, and Bullock’s acting reaches a new purity. She floats through this movie yet grounds it, letting “Gravity” connect with everyone these days who feel just a little lost.

When I saw this movie, I was surprised at just how fast it went, and with just two actors. I had never seen anything like this, but for what they did, they really pulled it off. If you haven’t seen this, you should. This is a must. I give it a high recommendation. You will love with how they really showed two people in space and how being lost in space is quite fearful. No one wants to go through that, and Bullock really captures the fear of being lost in space. Check it out to know what I mean.

Look out next week when I end off “Space Month” with a film that is good, but was needlessly too long.